Civil servants pulled “fast ones” on George Osborne by persuading him to
include more tax on pensioners and extra VAT in the Budget, Gordon Brown’s
former spin doctor Damian McBride has suggested.

Damian McBride, a former head of media at the Treasury, said he was surprised Mr Osborne “took his eye off the ball” by removing tax breaks for pensioners.

He argued Mr Osborne had fallen for several unpopular taxes suggested by civil servants and rejected by Labour ministers year after year.

Writing on his blog, the veteran political adviser said Mr Brown would never have let through the £3 billion raid on pensioners or a rise in all six main excise duties of beer, wine, spirits, cigarettes, fuel and cars.

He also ridiculed the Chancellor’s decision to put an end to tax breaks for hot takeaway foods and hairdressers' chairs.

Those “old chestnuts” would never have been touched by Mr Brown when he was Chancellor, he claimed.

Mr McBride resigned from Mr Brown's team after he was implicated in an attempt to put out smear stories about David Cameron and Mr Osborne before the last election.

He admits in the blog post that he had previously been "very impressed" with Mr Osborne's "highly disciplined" Budgets.

On those occasions, he was "gravely disappointed" to discover the usual "fast ones" had not been pulled by civil servants. But he said Mr Osborne had slipped up this week.

“For me, it felt as though they were so focused yesterday on the big ticket tax cuts – 50p and the raising of the personal allowance – and what they thought were the most high-profile tax rises – fuel duty and stamp duty, that they took their eye off a number of other balls,” he said.

In a rare return to political comment, the spin doctor suggested Mr Brown, and his former key advisers Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, would easily have predicted the unpopularity of ending extra tax breaks for pensioners.

Under the previous Government, a “scorecard” system made sure every policy was examined in detail to see what the potential impacts would be.

“George and his team didn’t seem prepared for the pensions row, and it certainly has overshadowed the overall package,” he said.

“Yes, that’s because of problems with the policy. Yes, it’s because the presentation was badly flawed. But also, and not to be underestimated, it looks as though something went very badly wrong in the scorecard process. Someone didn’t ask the basic questions the Eds used to ask, or they didn’t ask them often enough.”